By Victoria Wasylak
From our November 2024 issue
Michael Corleto
Soulful, smooth-as-butter country.
If the wistful musings on Michael Corleto’s sophomore country album Good Times ’n Willow Trees belie his mere 20 years, that may be because he’s already been a troubadour for half his life. The Kennebunk native first dusted off an idle guitar in his parents’ closet at age 10, and he began posting up outside the Main Street Barber Shop and gigging at Kennebunkport’s Colony Hotel in middle school. Initially, he gravitated to blues and jam-band covers, but when he began writing his own songs, he found an outlet in country music for reflecting on his small-town surroundings. After high school, Corleto spent a semester at Berklee College of Music but then decided his time was better spent in the studio. Last year, he returned to Maine and recorded his first album, Sincerely, Your Son.
Filled with rollicking tunes about heartbreak and his grandfather’s vintage truck, the record hit all the pop-country notes but ultimately rang a bit hollow to Corleto. “There were songs about being a depressed drunk, and I’ve never experienced that,” he says, “but that’s what I’m hearing in so much modern country.” Good Times ’n Willow Trees, by contrast, revels in deeply personal snapshots from his Maine life in twangy tracks ranging from the rowdy barn burner bursting with pedal steel “Ain’t Here for Long” to the sparse guitar ballad “Papa’s Place.”
These days, Corleto, who has more than 13,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, is leaning in to bluegrass — a comfortable middle ground, he says, between mainstream country and folk, another genre he enjoys. He plans to record a bluegrass album, then move to Nashville in the spring. But the honeyed, acoustic thrum of Good Times ’n Willow Trees has nudged him closer to his desired sound. “I felt like this was redemption for the first record,” Corleto says. “I feel more confident pushing this music out there.”
Singled Out
Solo tracks that hold their own.
Drey Armani
“Snooze”
Portlander Armani’s drowsy R&B jam juxtaposes lyrics about his go-go life, rising with the sun and jetting between Maine, Los Angeles, and his native Jamaica. Mellow sheets of synthesizer soften “Snooze” into a near-lullaby.
King Kyote
“Home”
“I like the way he holds his own, his vocal tone,” Snoop Dogg declared after York native Jon King performed his rock single “Get Out Alive” on NBC’s “American Song Contest” in 2022. Now, King is layering his husky vocals over yearning peals of pedal steel in “Home” — a love tune disguised as a gravelly Americana stomp.
Angelikah Fahray
“If I Would Die”
Portland singer-songwriter Fahray’s sultry jazz- and soul-inflected R&B will captivate fans of Erykah Badu and Jill Scott. “If I Would Die” drips with lush keyboard instrumentals and Fahray’s effortless sense of cool, even as she lays her heart bare.
Little Oso
“Other People’s Lives”
The Portland dream-pop band’s blend of chipper melodies and ambient guitar effects is made for open-window car rides and living-room dance parties. The lead single off their forthcoming album, How Lucky to Be Somebody, glimmers with wry optimism as frontwoman Jeannette Berman croons, “we could build a good life/in the end times.”
Rigometrics
“Endless Road”
Traveling to more than 250 shows over three years, this Portland-based trio found a muse in the freeway. Their latest single revels in the ramblin’ life with ’70s-rock-style swagger laced with hammering piano and howling vocals reminiscent of Bon Scott-era AC/DC.
Katherine Perkins
Ethereal, genre-bending ballads from a former folkie.
In “Hold On,” the lead single off her debut solo album, Being Younger, Katherine Perkins’s gauzy soprano drapes over mellow horns, jazzy twinges of organ, and soulful melodies: Hold on, hold on/My love, there’s more love for you/Than the night is long. An invocation for a friend who’d experienced a mental-health crisis, the track is nestled amongst a trove of genre-defying ballads about friendship, devotion, and the passage of time. Perkins wrote most of the lyrics seated at the piano in her Bar Harbor living room during the pandemic. “A lot of these songs ended up trying to nourish me or counsel me or counsel someone I loved, because I felt like everyone was frayed in that time,” she says.
Formerly a percussionist in the band at MDI High School, Perkins learned to play banjo in college. After graduation, she moved to New York, where she joined fellow MDI transplants in the experimental-rock band Harvey Eyeballs. Later, she leaned in to acoustic Appalachian music when she fronted the folk group Rose Hips & Ships, and she began dabbling in piano. By the time she returned to Bar Harbor, in 2015, her musical palette spanned a patchwork of genres. “The music that has influenced me has never fit neatly into categories,” Perkins says. “Any musician playing their heart out might move me.”
Alone at her piano in 2020, Perkins dreamed of performing with her far-flung musician friends again. In 2022, during a marathon three-day recording session in a Portland studio, she got her wish. Eight MDI natives and former New York bandmates showed up to play keyboard, bass, guitar, drums, synthesizer, bass clarinet, trumpet, and flugelhorn on Being Younger. Perkins’s husband, composer Danny Fisher-Lochhead, played alto saxophone. “I don’t feel like I’m a solo musician,” Perkins says. “It takes a long time to find those connections, and it’s such a blessing to have them.”
J-Wizdum
Inventive, trancelike beats for lazy Sundays.
J-Wizdum released his fourth solo album, Daze, on a Sunday so that his surreal lo-fi instrumentals could wash over fans as they chilled out on sofas or afternoon drives. “I want it to be more of something you’d sit down and listen to, as opposed to stand up, dance, and jive to,” says the Westbrook producer, whose given name is James Brooking.
Brooking has been honing his ear for instrumentals since he was a preteen immersing himself in the discographies of hip-hop greats like Nas, Rakim, and Wu-Tang Clan. In high school, he studied gritty soundscapes crafted by producers including J Dilla and Wu-Tang’s RZA, which inspired him to start mixing his own beats on his school-issued laptop. Later, he refined his production skills in his basement studio, where he pored over obscure, decades-old records for melodies to rearrange in original compositions. At Portland shops like Moody Lords and Strange Maine, he unearthed Japanese jazz fusion albums, Italian movie scores, and German psychedelia. “Certain instrumentals I’d leave on a loop for hours, because they gave me a different feeling than anything I’d ever heard at the time,” Brooking says.
After releasing his initial experiments on the music platform SoundCloud to a limited listenership, Brooking’s career gained momentum in 2020, when he unveiled a smattering of beat tapes and collaborations, including Notes from the Underground, with Portland rappers Dynamo-P and CLVNO. He’s since curated a steady stream of instrumental records with out-of-state rappers like Toronto’s Lord Juco and Detroit’s Noveliss.
But Daze is entirely his reverie. Uncluttered and downtempo, it flits between chunky ’80s-style synths and ethereal electronica and is best absorbed with your eyes closed. “I’m way more proud of it in the end,” Brooking says, “because I made it for me.”
Bonnie
Mystical, danceable alt-rock anthems.
Before their first practice in Rockland last year, bandmates Allison Cekala, Claire Donnelly, ME Hitt, and Santa Staffa gathered in the Northport studio of clairvoyant Bonnie Lee Gibson. They left with a name and a direction for their future sound. The group’s debut EP, Eclipsed, is a trio of dreamy, fuzz-coated rock charms that Donnelly says evokes the psychedelic vibe of their first meeting. The effect is something like The Breeders’ sublime vocal harmonies floating above Pixies’ leaden guitar riffs, peppered with ghostly keyboard notes.
The band opted against fine-tuning the recordings — a process known as mastering — to preserve their “scrappy” sound, which bassist Donnelly (also a member of Bait Bag, below) describes as “a little dark, a little mischievous, a little sexy, and loud.” Not quite what you’d expect from a group that includes two musicians with orchestral backgrounds: Staffa was previously an opera singer and string bassist, while vocalist and guitarist Cekala is a classically trained cellist. Bonnie, Staffa says, offers a welcome respite from the pair’s technical past.
Late last year, the group met for another round of fortune-telling, this time with a tarot-card reader in Morrill, who encouraged them to stick with the moodier, more brooding themes at work in their next project, a full-length album currently in progress. The lead single, “Ancient Light,” a simmering ballad with drumming like raindrops pattering on a rooftop, previews the shift. But whirling in the background are gritty guitar licks reminiscent of their earlier recordings. “I like the way we sound because there’s energy in it,” Staffa says. “I want to remain scrappy.”
Album Release Party
The homegrown hits keep coming.
Louisa Stancioff
When We Were Looking
Stancioff’s wispy soprano, echoing with the pangs of fresh heartache, flickers against a backdrop of frayed folk and acoustic indie rock on her first full-length album. The Camden singer-songwriter’s sharp storytelling and poignant vocals will resonate with fans of, say, Phoebe Bridgers or Lizzy McAlpine.
Binge-listen: “Emma,” a soft-strummed ballad that intertwines alt-country with a bittersweet string section.
Griffin William Sherry
Hundred Mile Wilderness
After 11 years lending his voice and guitar chops to popular folk trio The Ghost of Paul Revere, which disbanded in 2022, Litchfield’s Sherry has released his first solo LP: a swirling folk-rock odyssey punctuated with the sort of rousing harmonies that thrill fans of Mumford & Sons and, yes, TGOPR (RIP!).
Binge-listen: “As for Last Night,” an animated folk firecracker spurred on by racing banjos.
Justin Havu
Painting By Piano
A story unfolds between the balletic notes in this four-part instrumental album from a South Berwick pianist. The direction the tale takes — a whirlwind romance, perhaps, or maybe a cross-country journey — depends on the listener, but Havu’s grace on the keys is unwavering.
Binge-listen: The nimble, feather-soft finale “Part IV.”
Bait Bag
Electric Splash
It’s physically impossible to listen to this North Haven feminist-punk trio’s sophomore album sitting down. Provocative, heartfelt, and punctuated with chugging bass riffs, Electric Splash is a post-riot-grrrl rumble that lives up to its title.
Binge-listen: “Trick Question” — a steady drumbeat underscores lyrics about unconditional love, wrapping the listener in a sonic hug.
Darksoft
Relativism
Spacey guitar riffs and soft-spoken lyrics define Portland singer-songwriter (and Look Up Records founder) Bill Darksoft’s sixth solo album, a dreamy wind-down listen that nestles between post-punk and lo-fi pop.
Binge-listen: The buoyant “Till the End of Time,” with silvery guitar tones that graze ’80s new wave.
